#1650 A New Look at Edward Abbey

Listening to America

History, Politics, Unitedstates, Society & Culture, American

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 5 May 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

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Summary

Clay's conversation with Amy Irvine, the author of the 2018 book Desert Cabal: A New Season in the Wilderness. Ms. Irvine published the book on the 50th anniversary of Edward Abbey's blockbuster Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness. Desert Cabal is a careful and nuanced conversation with the late Edward Abbey, who died in 1989. Wasn't his romance with the wilderness the benefit of white privilege? And wasn't he mostly pretending he was alone in that windblown trailer at Arches National Park? Amy Irvine believes that the wilderness is healing in every way and that America's National Parks, Monuments, Forests, etc., are endangered by the agenda of the Trump administration. She sees hope in finding people to trust, care for, and rebuild America by living well but also protesting in the streets when necessary. Interview recorded March 19, 2025.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, everyone, and welcome to my introduction to this week's podcast. This is Amy Irvine.
0:05.7	She lives in western Colorado up near Grand Junction. Her book is Desert Cabal, a new season in the
0:13.4	wilderness. It was published in 2018 on the 50th anniversary of Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire.
0:22.6	And so the trope of the book is that she's out where he was secretly buried near the Mexican
0:27.1	border and she's sitting next to him.
0:29.0	She brought him a beer or two and she brought some harder stuff and coffee for herself
0:33.2	and that she wanted to enter into this dialogue with him, and she wanted to talk with him about a number
0:38.4	of subjects. One, his treatment of women. He had five wives and 100 million mistresses, and Me Too
0:46.6	Movement would have rough time with him if you can get rid of Garrison Keeler in the Me Too movement and Al Franken in the Me Too movement
0:57.3	and then allow sexual misconduct of appalling magnitude in our time now and also in someone
1:09.4	like Edward Abbey. And so that's one question.
1:11.3	But it's not her main question.
1:12.5	Another question is it's a deeper women's question or feminist question, depending on how
1:18.9	you want to say it, but a question, an important one.
1:22.1	And that is, while you were out pretending to be all alone in the wilderness, you're a white
1:26.5	privileged man who is pretty surely not going to be harassed or molested
1:31.7	out there.
1:32.8	Grown up in a culture where men go to places alone who has plenty of money and freedom
1:37.8	to do this.
1:39.3	This is white privilege, white male privilege in the highest sense.
1:42.6	While you were doing that, Edward Abbey.
1:44.7	Your wives were being neglected.
	...

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